The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [379]
“The next night in the back streets I heard a voice telling me to come. But it was a less articulate voice than that which had come from the tree. It made known to me only that the door was near. And finally there came the still and silent moment when I stood before the door.
“It was a god who opened it for me. It was a god who said Come.
“I was frightened as I descended the inevitable stairway, as I followed a steeply sloping tunnel. I lighted the candle I had brought with me, and I saw that I was entering an underground temple, a place older than the city of Alexandria, a sanctuary built perhaps under the ancient pharaohs, its walls covered with tiny colored pictures depicting the life of old Egypt.
“And then there was the writing, the magnificent picture writing with its tiny mummies and birds and embracing arms without bodies, and coiling snakes.
“I moved on, coming into a vast place of square pillars and a soaring ceiling. The same paintings decorated every inch of stone here.
“And then I saw in the corner of my eye what seemed at first a statue, a black figure standing near a pillar with one hand raised to rest against the stone. But I knew it was no statue. No Egyptian god made out of diorite ever stood in this attitude nor wore a real linen skirt about its loins.
“I turned slowly, bracing myself against the full sight of it, and saw the same burnt flesh, the same streaming hair, though it was black, the same yellow eyes. The lips were shriveled around the teeth and the gums, and the breath came out of its throat full of pain.
“ ‘How and whence did you come?’ he asked in Greek.
“I saw myself as he saw me, luminous and strong, even my blue eyes something of an incidental mystery, and I saw my Roman garments, my linen tunic gathered in gold buckles on my shoulders, my red cloak. With my long yellow hair, I must have looked like a wanderer from the north woods, ‘civilized’ only on the surface, and perhaps this was now true.
“But he was the one who concerned me. And I saw him more fully, the seamed flesh burnt to his ribs and molded to his collarbone and the jutting bones of his hips. He was not starved, this thing. He had recently drunk human blood. But his agony was like heat coming from him, as though the fire still cooked him from within, as though he were a self-contained hell.
“ ‘How have you escaped the burning?’ he asked. ‘What saved you? Answer!’
“ ‘Nothing saved me,’ I said, speaking Greek as he did.
“I approached him holding the candle to the side when he shied from it. He had been thin in life, broad-shouldered like the old pharaohs, and his long black hair was cropped straight across the forehead in that old style.
“ ‘I wasn’t made when it happened,’ I said, ‘but afterwards, by the god of the sacred grove in Gaul.’
“ ‘Ah, then he was unharmed, this one who made you.’
“ ‘No, burned as you are, but he had enough strength to do it. He gave and took the blood over and over again. He said, “Go into Egypt and find why this has happened.” He said the gods of the wood had burst into flames, some in their sleep and some awake. He said this had happened all over the north.’
“ ‘Yes.’ He nodded, and he gave a dry rasping laugh that shook his entire form. ‘And only the ancient had the strength to survive, to inherit the agony which only immortality can sustain. And so we suffer. But you have been made. You have come. You will make more. But is it justice to make more? Would the Father and the Mother have allowed this to happen to us if the time had not come?’
“ ‘But who are the Father and the Mother?’ I asked. I knew he did not mean the earth when he said Mother.
“ ‘The first of us,’ he answered, ‘those from whom all of us descend.’
“I tried to penetrate his thoughts, feel the truth of them, but he knew what I was doing, and his mind folded up like a flower